Jen opens the episode, checks in from Portal Thermoculture in Minneapolis, mentions the heat, and invites viewers to comment with their location and weather. This brief intro orients listeners and encourages engagement.
Jen opens the episode, checks in from Portal Thermoculture in Minneapolis, mentions the heat, and invites viewers to comment with their location and weather. This brief intro orients listeners and encourages engagement.
Jen frames 'letting go' as an early sobriety lesson applied broadly, outlines plans to run sauna-based sessions at a treatment center, and explains how heat and stillness can help people access surrender. She describes the sauna heat as a purposeful stressor that can reveal internal resistance and prompt reflection.
Jen prompts viewers to reflect on what they've let go regarding alcohol, then recounts her own eleven-year sobriety and the pivotal moment of surrender that occurred unexpectedly during a run. She emphasizes that letting go can happen outside formal rooms and often arrives after sustained commitment.
Before stepping into the sauna, Jen references the book Hot Wired and talks about heat acclimatization, how modern comforts limit heat tolerance, and practical ways to build resilience to rising temperatures. She wraps up with a call to learn more, a sign-off, and next episode details.
Hey everyone, welcome to Sober Not Somber Hour. I am dialing in today from Portal Thermoculture in Minneapolis. It is toasty. I'm in my car so I'm turning up the AC even though I'm going to talk today a little bit about heat acclimatization. Acclimatization? we can discuss. I'm your host, Jen Varale, Sober Not Somber Hour. Come on in and comment. Where are you checking in from? What's the temperature? What's the weather where you're at? I'm in Minneapolis and it's 93 degrees and it's steamy. Yeah, so I talk about all things sobriety and today I'm gonna share a little bit about one of the first lessons in early sobriety, which is the concept of letting go.
And this can be applied in all areas of life. And I was just thinking about creating some content around this topic of letting go for people that are in early sobriety. They're in their first 30 days of treatment. And I am actually going to a treatment center in June to do a series of 6 sessions in the sauna and out of the sauna with people in early sobriety. So taking through groups of folks that have learned or been practicing sort of the concepts of AA, which if you know the first step is really letting go.
Gosh, sorry, I keep cutting out. I'm so sorry. So surrendering to a higher power. So the idea of letting go and working with the heat of the sauna to help people sort of tap into internally what letting go might really mean. And the reason I'm doing it in the sauna is because the heat of the sauna activates our bodies physically and puts us in a state of uncomfortableness. The heat is a stressor in the sauna. It can be viewed as a very good stressor though, because you're teaching your body to kind of rise up to these challenges and work through them, oftentimes in stillness, sitting still.
So the idea of letting go seems like an action, right? Like letting go of something you're consciously choosing to let go. But sometimes the stillness piece of it, as found within sauna and what I personally experienced, is that things come up that we don't anticipate when we allow ourselves to be still. So I'm just gonna pose that question to you all today. If You are in early sobriety or maybe you've just made mindful drinking choices to not drink on occasion. You in that practice have let go of something.
Drop in the comments or if you're watching this after what have you let go in terms of your relationship with alcohol. How did that look for you? And it's an interesting thing to revisit. I have 11 years of continuous sobriety. And I will tell you my letting go story did not happen even in the first year. So I stopped drinking and I was alcohol free for at least a year, but I will never forget the moment when my surrender to it became complete. And that's what I think a lot of people maybe in early sobriety don't understand is that you have to sort of Trust in a higher power and maybe you don't 100% believe that alcohol, not drinking alcohol is the best choice for you.
Like you still want to hold on to that story or that identity that served you for so long, which is natural. I think that's just natural. So for me, that moment of letting go didn't take place in a place of stillness like the sauna. I hadn't even discovered it yet. This is 10 plus years ago. It happened for me when I was on a run around this lake in Minneapolis that I have ran probably for 15 years prior. I would always run the same route and always do my whatever it was, just under 4 miles. But at this point in this place, probably 2 1/2 miles into my run, I felt the power of truly letting go of alcohol.
And it brought me to my knees. I was absolutely like it just came sort of from out of nowhere. And again, I was in the experience of being in nature with this thought and this experience. So what happened for me. was not in stillness, but I was actively running and that's where I process everything and my creativity, everything would come out on these runs that I've been doing my entire life. So to have that moment happen in a complete unexpected way where I was pushing my body physically, but also allowing space for that to rise up was so powerful.
It wasn't in the AA rooms. what happened in that moment was the conditioning and the learning and the stories that I had heard in the rooms for a good year that all just somehow ignited or connected within me. And at that moment, I knew I would not be choosing alcohol. I did not need it. I was letting fully go of that notion. So my share today is just, you know, to really prompt maybe remembering a remembrance of what that felt like and huge gratitude for staying in it until that moment can occur for you.
So that's what I have for you today. Jen, we're always sober, not somber. I'm going to step into the sauna right now. And I also just wanted to touch on the heat acclimatization, acclimatization, however you say it, because I'm reading a book by Bill Gifford called Hot Wired, and it's all about the sauna experience. how we tolerate heat. And we have so many creature comforts right now in our lives. I've got the air conditioning on right now. I mean, it's low and I'm really trying not to like blast it, but it's hard because I'm really warm and now I'm going to go get in a warm sauna.
So what is our mindset around these extreme temperatures and like really looking at how we pretty much are indoors or stay inside our temperature comfort zone of 70 degrees? What does it look like to be out on a hot, humid day at 93 degrees? Yeah, and those days are coming with climate change. We're just going to be getting hotter. So let's train our bodies. Let's understand. And I didn't really realize this before, but you can actually train for heat tolerance. I've naturally sort of been doing that my entire life when I would run in the summer at like 5 o'clock, not the best time to run.
But things like that really can acclimatize us and make us more resilient, more tolerant. So I'd encourage you to take a look at that. There's a lot of science behind it. The book again is Hotwired. DM me with any questions and have a great Tuesday. We'll see you next week. It'll be June 2nd. Ciao ciao from Portal. Bye bye.
